


This is the Job

by scribblemyname



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: 5+1 Times, Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Mission Fic, POV Second Person, Spies & Secret Agents, implied PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4676405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how you become an IMF agent. You become a terrorist, wanted in sixteen countries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andibeth82](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/gifts).



> So I fell in love with your prompt about the stuff hiding away in their past on the FGE letter you wrote, but this is really gen stuff for one character only, so I'm just giving it to you instead of writing it for the exchange. Hope you like.

This is how you become an IMF agent. You become a terrorist, wanted in sixteen countries.

~

Antwerp.

You're fluent in Dutch and closely acquainted with the Antverpian dialect. Classes and internships and travel and memberships in those language sites where you can practice with real native speakers by having real conversations paid off. So technically did the hours and hours of rote practice with live ammo and field practice without it, grabbing fellow recruits for more off-the-books training in your downtime, and taking every extra hour of anything they'll let you take. You get a mission because you're the only one who bothered to learn multiple dialects of the language and practice the accents for which region you're supposed to be from.

Your cover must be flawless. You must be a local. You must act like a local, speak like a local, move like a local. You must disappear completely after you destroy a carefully hidden terrorist cell with a cover too good to break or to gain the cooperation of the host country.

You must disappear afterward because if you don’t, you will be tried as a terrorist who destroyed a small family-owned business and left unacceptable casualties.

~

Lisbon.

If they want a situation handled quietly and no one to be any the wiser that it was ‘handled’ at all, they send Treadstone or Blackbriar or any of the related CIA-based agencies and the problem goes away. If the situation on the ground is hot and the host country is cooperative, they send SHIELD and the problem blows up before it smooths over and goes away. If the situation on the ground is hot and the host country wants no interference and the US government never wants to hear a thing about it, they send the IMF and the problem blows up and doesn’t smooth over but at least it goes away.

You joined the IMF. Your job is to ruffle the right feathers and blow the right things up.

You don’t mind when they jam a gun in your hand, turn you loose on the range, then turn you loose on organized crime in Portugal with orders to leave no witnesses left because there is no absolution if anyone ever finds out it was you.

Gang warfare goes on paper. Insomnia goes in your medical record.

No witnesses, you tell yourself. It’s the job.

~

Pakistan.

You’re supposedly a beautiful woman, though you don’t much care when you look in the mirror and you’re more likely to go with utilitarian clothes and hairstyles than anything else. You’ve always run with the boys and pleased your veteran father, and you’ve never been good with men, unless being one of them counts.

They send you to honeypot and turn the tables on a guerilla leader who likes women to his own detriment. You don’t know how to do this job no matter how many times they practice the lines and the moves with you until you know exactly how many eyelash flutters is supposed to be realistic. You speak the language, you don’t need a gun to break a man’s arm, and you’re beautiful, so this should be a walk in the park.

Except you can’t honeypot to save your life.

He knows what you are. He puts a gun under your ribcage in a public place and no one sees or feels it but you, but you take him out because it’s what you’re trained to do and you know exactly how it’s done.

His brother takes over the organization. You’re branded a terrorist. You can’t seem to wash the feel of his fingers off your skin.

~

Milan.

You’ve been chasing this problem halfway across the globe, a hacker in love with the idea of destroying for the sake of knowing it can be done.

The first agent assigned to the case was tasked to bring him in. The second was tasked to neutralize his codes and equipment. When the reports landed in front of you, word was to eliminate the problem entirely.

This is a man impossible to follow or trace, who rewrites his own presence in surveillance and records and databases almost before he has entered them. You’ve had to resort to every get your hands dirty trick in the gruntwork book to pull this off.

You’re not an assassin, but your job is to clean up hot messes and he’s become one. You slip the sedative in his coffee, then pretend to be his girlfriend hauling him off when he’s slurring sleepily against your shoulder.

You don’t ask what happens after you drop him off in the waiting van.

~

Budapest.

You’re coming in off of mandatory downtime and they decide to give you a milk run, something easy but significant in keeping with both your bill of health and your skills. You take Hannaway and baby field agent Benjamin Dunn and intercept a drop. It’s your mission, your call, and it feels good to be back out in the field again, fielding changing intelligence at a second’s notice and hovering watchfully over your agents’ backs.

No one’s going to die today. It’s exactly the kind of mission you need right now. It reminds you of why you signed up for this job in the first place.

Only God and fate like to laugh and you realize something’s wrong an instant too late.

“I’m coming in,” and you go, but you’re not fast enough. When you reach your agent, he’s down on the ground, blood bubbling up through his wounds, and the look in his eyes makes you want to cry.

You’re already a wanted woman. You already have blood on your fingers. It doesn’t seem so far a step to vow to make the assassin pay.

~

Dubai.

Hunt has left you all to go it alone. He’s the only one left he trusts to get the job done and maybe that could sting, but you care about his feelings about as much as he cares about yours right now.

“What about you?” Brandt asks, looking up with vulnerable eyes that nevertheless have steel behind them.

You’re wanted in sixteen countries. You dream of blood spatters and endless miles of dust. Your hip feels empty without a holster and death follows you as surely as if you were its angel.

“Not much to tell,” you say and lighten it with a teasing smile. Every good agent is trained to lie. “Benji is much more interesting.”

Brandt smiles politely back but you can see the lies and recognition of lies hiding behind his gaze. He knows like every other field agent of the Impossible Missions Force knows.

~

This is how you become an IMF agent. 


End file.
